POLITICO poll: Stay out of Ukraine, Middle East

Amid deepening violence across Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Americans are recoiling from direct engagement overseas and oppose U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine by large margins, according to a POLITICO poll of 2014 battleground voters.

The survey provides a unique look at the foreign policy attitudes of voters who will decide the most competitive Senate and House races this fall. It shows an intensely skeptical view of American military intervention:

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Asked whether the U.S should do more to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine, just 17 percent answered in the affirmative. Thirty-one percent said the current policy is correct and 34 percent said the U.S. should be less involved. The poll was completed before the downing last week of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, the civilian airliner that was apparently attacked over eastern Ukraine.

More than three-quarters of likely voters say they support plans to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. Only 23 percent oppose the plan.

Forty-four percent of likely voters favor less involvement in Iraq’s civil war, versus 19 percent who favor more involvement and 23 percent who say the current level of involvement is appropriate.

A 51 percent majority said the situation in Iraq affects U.S. national security “a little” or “not at all.” Forty-two percent said it affects U.S. national security “a lot.”

Likely voters prefer less involvement in Syria’s civil war over more involvement, 42 percent to 15 percent. Twenty-six percent of likely voters support the current, limited level of involvement.

On the issue of foreign policy specifically, voters say they trust Republicans over Democrats by 7 points, 39 percent to 32 percent. Twenty-eight percent said they were unsure which party to trust.

The picture that emerges from the survey is consistent across issues of foreign policy and national security: Americans are profoundly wary of getting entangled overseas and seem to be skeptical of the value of projecting U.S. power on foreign conflicts. Republicans are modestly more hawkish than Democratic and independent voters, but a majority of self-identified GOP voters support pulling out of Afghanistan and maintaining or reducing involvement in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

In the big picture, two-thirds of respondents agreed with the statement that U.S. military actions should be “limited to direct threats to our national security.” Only 22 percent agreed with the statement that as a “moral leader,” the United States “has a responsibility to use its military to protect democracy around the globe.”

Respondent Deborah Cantrell, a Georgia nurse who intends to vote for Democratic candidates this fall, said she supports pulling back from Iraq and Afghanistan and believes the situation in Ukraine is “very complicated.”

“I think any time ethnic nationalism goes on, it’s really bad,” said Cantrell, 58. “I hope we don’t get terribly involved right off the bat because I’m not sure we can do anything to make it better. I generally don’t think we can go in and have people behave properly just because we’re there.”

Californian Eugene Diamond, a student who also works at a supermarket, blames President Barack Obama for the eruption of conflicts around the globe. “Obama’s afraid of everybody,” said Diamond, 24, a registered Republican. “I can’t wait until Hillary [Clinton] or anybody else comes in and gets this guy out.”

The POLITICO poll, designed by SocialSphere Inc. and conducted by the research firm GfK, tested 834 likely voters in competitive U.S. House and Senate races. The poll was conducted online using GfK’s KnowledgePanel methodology, which is also employed by The Associated Press. The poll ran from July 3-13 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

While voters appear to have strong inclinations on foreign policy and on national security, it is unclear how powerfully those issues will weigh on the 2014 elections. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said that foreign policy would be important in determining their vote this year, but when asked to name the issue that would matter most, just 11 percent named foreign affairs, national defense or terrorism.